I saw the Gamasutra article the other day and wanted to bump this thread with some feedback in this thread as to why we stopped playing the game--as it is directly related to this topic and previous posts.
Our group very much enjoyed the game and was quite impressed by it. I feel like it has some very unique and special features and is set up for success.
However, the primary reason we stopped playing was simply due to the game feeling far too 'taxing' and time-consuming to play competitively. This is pretty much related to the time-step/granularity issue I touched on before.
As long as the time-steps are 10 minutes, the game has to be checked within 10 minutes of any enemy action or you risk losing your window to properly counter the attack. While not every attack is like this, many attacks are--especially with people executing very precisely choreographed queued actions.
While we absolutely enjoyed playing the game, we simply weren't up for any more games. It took too much time and was very draining for those who were interesting in winning. Those who did not check regularly got absolutely crushed by combat timings and counter-attacks.
I strongly feel that this will be an issue for a lot of the general public and especially the more casual crowd and would highly recommend looking into not just having options to change the speed of the game, but the granularity and frequency of the time steps. Having the steps be further apart would lessen the need to check the game quite so regularly and make it more practical to play the game 'casually' and still be relatively competitive.
Wish you guys all the best, though! I think the game at its core is fantastic.